Annual financial gains generated by the release of off-balance sheet items.
Improvement in credit file compliance rates through targeted actions aimed at employees and streamlining practices.
Reduction of the processing time for simple successions instances.
In an era where operational efficiency directly impacts competitive advantage, a leading French banking group, embarked on An Ambitious Transformation Journey. Partnering with OntraaK, this banking group has reimagined how its multiple banking establishments approach operational excellence. Through Ontraak's expertise in process mining, RPA, and AI-driven transformation, the collaboration delivered remarkable results: 20% improvement in credit file compliance, 50% reduction in succession processing times, and over €3.2 million in annual financial gains.
This organization operates in a complex banking organizational landscape characteristic of large banking conglomerates. With multiple autonomous banking establishments underits umbrella, the group faced a critical challenge: each entity had developedits own operational practices, leading to significant process fragmentation andinconsistency across the organization. While this federated structure providedlocal autonomy, it also resulted in missed opportunities for standardizationand efficiency gains.
The group possessed a considerable strategic asset: vast repositories of operationaldata generated daily across all establishments. However, this data remainedlargely untapped, representing unrealized potential for insight-drivendecision-making. Adding to the complexity, Its central IT department function operated alongside locally-managed business operations, with various business linesattempting to harmonize practices without a unified, data-driven approach.
Recognizing these challenges, the group engaged OntraaK to establish a structured operational excellence capability that would serve all its establishments. The strategic objectives were threefold:
The OntraaK team structured the transformation journey through a phased approach that balanced quick wins with long-term capability building. The initiative began with a successful proof-of-value exercise using process mining technology, which OntraaK designed and executed to secure executive sponsorship and organizational buy-in for broader deployment.
With leadership commitment secured, OntraaK supported a major banking organization in establishing a Center of Operational Excellence at the corporate level and developed a standardized exploration methodology to be consistently applied across different processes and establishments. Rather than imposing top-down solutions, OntraaK positioned the center as an enabler, providing both the technological infrastructure, primarily leveraging Celonis as the process mining platform, and the methodological expertise to support business lines in their improvement journeys.
The engagement model centered on three parallel work streams. The first focused on major transformation project support, where the OntraaK Process Intelligence team embedded data considerations from the earliest stages of project design. This proactive approach ensured that projects were structured to maximize data-capture and enable effective monitoring from day one. As implementations progressed, OntraaK continuously analyzed deployment metrics and adoption patterns, enabling project leaders to identify and address issues before they impacted ROI realization.
The second work stream drove continuous improvement across business lines. Using process mining, the OntraaK team established golden processes defined collaboratively with stakeholders from different establishments. These reference models enabled systematic comparison of actual practices against the ideal state and across peer establishments. Deviations from the golden process triggered structured root cause analyses led by OntraaK, often uncovering opportunities for automation, tool enhancements, or organizational adjustments. Critically, the OntraaK team quantified each improvement hypothesis using actual process data, allowing the organization to prioritize initiatives based on projected impact and track realization over time.
The third workstream focused on transformation animation and scaling. Beyond individual analyses, OntraaK orchestrated an ecosystem of continuous improvement, deploying 15 use cases across four business domains. This included not only process mining analyses but also the deployment of RPA automations for high-impact opportunities and exploratory work around AI-driven process optimization. OntraaK ensured that successful practices were documented, shared across establishments, and continuouslyr efined based on performance data.
The transformation delivered substantial, measurable impact across multiple dimensions of operational performance. Two processes in particular credit subscription and succession management exemplify the power of the data-driven approach.
The credit subscription process, fundamental to banking operations, underwent a comprehensive redesign based on process mining insights delivered by OntraaK. Analysis revealed significant variation in file quality and processing steps across establishments, as well as bottlenecks in handoffs between different actors in the processing chain.
OntraaK's intervention combined multiple levers: targeted training programs for staff based on specific gap analyses, process rationalization to eliminate unnecessary variations, and automation of low-value administrative tasks. The results were striking:
Succession management, a sensitive process requiring both regulatory compliance and operational efficiency presented different challenges. OntraaK's process mining analysis revealed that simple, low-value successions consumed disproportionate resources while following the same complex workflows as high-value, complex cases.
The OntraaK team collaborated with business stakeholders from this major banking organization to define a differentiated golden process, then designed and implemented automation for the end-to-end handling of simple, small-value successions. Results exceeded expectations:
Beyond these flagship processes, OntraaK's Process Intelligence capability delivered value across the organization. Analysis of off-balance-sheet commitments led to potentially €3.2 million in annual financial gains through the release of previously locked capital. A comprehensive study of IT project practices across 6,700 projects enabled the complete redesign of project portfolio management and monitoring approaches, improving both project delivery predictability and resource allocation.
This collaboration between OntraaK and a major banking group offers valuable insights for organizations pursuing operational transformation:
Most importantly, the partnership demonstrated that sustainable transformation requires moving beyond isolated improvement projects toward building organizational capabilities. By supporting the organization in establishing a Center of Excellence with clear methodology, appropriate technology, and a service-oriented engagement model—OntraaK created an engine for continuous improvement that continues to generate value long after initial deployments.
As organizations across industries confront pressure to optimize operations while improving customer experience, This partnership illuminates a path forward: leverage data systematically, engage stakeholders collaboratively, and build capabilities that enable continuous evolution rather than episodic change initiatives. OntraaK's approach—combining deep process intelligence expertise with pragmatic change management proved instrumental in transforming strategic ambition into measurable business outcomes.
